Following the Annual Council Meeting, held on 20 May 2024, where membership of Council committees is decided, Trish, Richard and Louise continue to have important new responsibilities. Louise is continuing for a second year as our Deputy Mayor. Sutton South Councillors have made a major contribution to the Mayoralty, as prior to Louise accepting this role Trish was Mayor of Sutton for three years. Richard was Mayor of Sutton in 2016-17. Louise is now combining this role with being Chair of the Licensing Committee, and is a member of the important Housing, Economy and Business Committee.

Trish continues as Chair of the important Audit and Governance Committee and is a member of the important Environment and Sustainable Transport Committee. Richard will continue as Chair of the Council’s Planning Committee.

On 14 May a sub-committee of Sutton Council’s Licensing Committee considered a string of complaints by local residents about noise nuisance from the Spaghetti Tree restaurant in Brighton Road. As the restaurant is in our Ward, none of the Ward Councillors could sit as members of the sub-committee, as those taking the decision must be independent from any local influence. The committee considered whether this anti-social behaviour, involving the frequent playing of music at loud volume and thus disturbing local residents, was a breach of the licence conditions for regulated entertainment that governed the operation of the restaurant. The committee was concerned about the disturbance and decided to vary the licence of the restaurant to prevent the playing of live and recorded music as regulated entertainment at the premises. The owner has 21 days to appeal against the decision.

This is sad – but the owners of premises must recognise that licence conditions are imposed to protect the local residents and they will be enforced, so they cannot be ignored without there being consequences.

We are working with Sutton Council to set up a Friends of Devonshire Avenue Nature Area group.

Would you like to join it? The nature area is the only open space in our Ward, in an area where many children live in flats without access to a garden. As it is the only open space in our Ward it is precious to us. It is a nature area so requires careful management. To join the Friends group email the Sutton Council officer leading the work, Dawn Fielding

dawn.fielding@sutton.gov.uk

We have secured funding for improvements to the nature area – to the signage and the seating and to clean off the graffiti. On 18 October last year the three Councillors met with several Council officers from the Parks Department at the Nature Area to discuss improvements to the area, and we subsequently took proposals to the local committee to obtain funding for improvement work. On 23 January we met with the volunteers from Sutton Nature Conservation Volunteers who were engaged in necessary maintenance activities at the site. There is discussion about how to best use the area, protect biodiversity (such as the rare “ivy broomrape” which is found in the nature area) while keeping it well used by residents, reduce litter and graffiti, and whether it should be locked at night. Please contact us with your views and to join the Friends group.

While the Nature Reserve is the only open space in our Ward two parks are adjacent – Warren Park at the north eastern boundary of the Ward and Overton Park at the south western boundary. There are also steps being taken to establish Friends groups for these parks, in particular Warren Park. If you live close to one of these parks and would like to join the Friends group contact Dawn Fielding

dawn.fielding@sutton.gov.uk

On 4 March the Council discussed the budget proposals for the coming year. Legally, the Council is required to set a balanced budget. With so many Councils going bust or in great financial difficulty, this was always going to be a difficult task. The problems are due to Government cuts but also a big spike in demand for services. While people think of the Council as the people who mend the potholes, empty the bins and fix the street lights, 70% of spending is on adult social care and children’s services (particularly for those children with special educational needs), plus the cost of finding accommodation for the homeless. There has been a major increase in demand in the past year, particularly in the number of adults whose social care has to be paid for by the Council and in the number of homeless families.

Trish and Richard both spoke in the debate, Trish on the role of audit and governance (she chairs the Audit and Governance Committee) and Richard on homelessness – a subject in which he has a special interest due to the work history of his daughter, Ellie, and because as chair of Planning Committee he has a role in increasing the supply of affordable family accommodation.

Here is Richard’s speech:

“There is a statistic buried on page 21 of the main paper that an
extra £2.75 million is needed due to the additional demand for
temporary accommodation. This is the cost of homelessness – and
tonight 1045 Sutton families are homeless and living in bed
and breakfast accommodation, many of them some distance from
Sutton. I find this a frightening figure.
I commend what the Council is doing – not set out at length in
these papers before us tonight – to help people avoid
homelessness and to assist them if it happens. And I am pleased at what we are doing to increase the supply of affordable family homes.

But what a local authority can do is limited. This is a national issue.
There has been a major spike in homelessness in the last year,
not just in Sutton but nation wide.
We ought to recognise the causes of this – that families have been
priced out of their homes by the cost of living crisis and the 14
consecutive monthly increases in interest rates that followed the
famous budget based on the principles associated with those
revered icons of the Conservative right Kwasi Kwarteng and – Lis
Truss – who I see is now re-inventing herself as an icon of
American and British deep state conspiracy theorists.
Who cares about homelessness ? Not the Government, which
ignores reasonable policy proposals that would help, such as the
proposals last week from the LGA to lift the cap on housing benefit
subsidy for temporary accommodation, increase
discretionary housing payments and – most important – ensure that local housing
allowance rates track market rates.
Not Rishi Sunak, whose often repeated targets we are asked to
judge him on – not that he is achieving them – do not include any
target on reducing homelessness, which he clearly does not see
as important. I find that shocking.
And can I mention the contribution to the debate of that other great
icon of the Conservative right Suella Braverman who told us the
homelessness crisis was largely caused by foreigners and by
people who chose homelessness as a life style, and that the big issue was
“Should they be allowed to sleep in tents ?”
That seems cruelly remote from our homeless residents worried
about how to get their kids to school in Sutton when they are in B
and B accommodation in Slough or Heathrow, or somewhere.
This is a problem causing destitution and poverty.
We are doing what we can – but it requires Government action and the Tory Government is in
complete denial.”

It is some years since we have last had an exercise to measure the volume and speed of traffic in our Ward. The last time this happened it enabled us to introduce some measures to calm traffic in Cavendish Road. From Monday 19th February these tubes, integral to traffic measurement equipment, appeared in many local roads at the eastern end of the Ward. The tubes collected data for seven days on the volume, speed and classification of vehicles. The data will be collated and the implications considered.

We are always seeking ways to improve the quality of life locally. The defibrillator installed in Brighton Road outside Northumberland House, pictured above, is a potentially important facility, but we were disturbed to learn that the one at the railway station a few hundred metres north of this location has been stolen. Action is in hand to replace it.

Many new street trees have been planted in the Ward including, in the recent period, new trees in Farm Road, Devonshire Avenue, Effingham Close, Prior Avenue and Kayemoor Road, adding to the pleasant, green, suburban feel of our Ward. We are delighted that the tree that had to be felled in Brighton Road, outside Northumberland House, as it was diseased, has been replaced, thanks to funding we obtained from the Council’s Public Realm budget.

The fencing in The Quadrant, nearby, which had become damaged has been repaired, also with funding we obtained from the Public Realm budget.

In addition, Sutton Council was delighted to be successful in obtaining funding to upgrade rail services to Belmont Station. The funding will allow train services to double from two to four trains per hour and will also facilitate improvements to the station. This will improve transport to the Cancer Hub.